


The Stony Face of the Past

by White Aster (white_aster)



Category: Final Fantasy VII, GetBackers
Genre: Alternate Universe - Real World, Community: no_true_pair, Crossover, Gen, Prison
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-06-01
Updated: 2008-06-01
Packaged: 2017-10-05 19:26:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,641
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/45267
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/white_aster/pseuds/White%20Aster
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Real-world AU crossover fusion thing!  Cid Highwind and Akabane Kurodo, for the no_true_pair challenge comm.</p><p><i>In Cid's expert opinion, "creepy" did not even begin to do justice to Akabane Kurodo.  It wasn't just that he'd been convicted of killing something like 300 people over a ten year period.  It wasn't that he had some weirdo powers having to do with absorbing weapons into his blood that meant he got the no metal treatment and they had to make sure everything that went in on his food tray came back out, minus the food.  </i></p><p>It was that he'd gotten convicted of so many murders because he'd admitted to them.  It was that he hadn't gotten nailed for more because he eventually couldn't remember enough details to pin specific crimes on him.  It was that he had walked into prison with a smile on his face, and it had stayed there for three years.  It was that he was a fucking monster, and he was the nicest, most well-behaved prisoner that Cid had ever had the dubious pleasure of guarding.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Stony Face of the Past

_Nostalgia paints a smile on the stony face of the past._ \- Mason Cooley

\--

"Jesus fucking Christ, I hate I-54 at rush hour. Goddamn commuters getting in my way. Don't they know some of us have to get to work?" Cid groused as he walked into the locker room. The cigarette in his mouth was unlit, but obviously not by choice.

"Tell me about it," Wedge muttered, tossing his duffel into his locker and adjusting his gunbelt. "I was stuck behind this woman who had her cellphone on the whole time, nattering away and not paying any attention to the damn road. People these days, I tell you."

Cid's profanity trailed off into muttering as he changed into his uniform and holstered his gun. The unlit cigarette stayed in place the whole time, until he tossed it into the garbage on his and Wedge's way to their station. "And you've got a double shift, don't you?" Wedge asked.

"Fucking A. Afternoon and night. All because Strife's got a fucking cold. He'd better be on death's door, that's all I've got to say." Cid signed in and nodded to the yawning morning shift. "Any problems?"

Biggs shook his head. "Nothing. Breakfast and lunch were quiet. 45B goes to the dentist at 3, 50A hasn't come back from the hospital yet, and you might want to follow up on that in case they're thinking that they're just gonna show up with him whenever. Oh, and 49B finished his stint, so only the Doc's left in solitary." Biggs grinned as he turned over his chair to Cid. "He was begging me to let him out so he didn't have to listen to anymore of the Doc's lectures through the walls."

Cid grunted, eyes flicking over the monitors. Every camera showed him concrete and steel bars and inmates. Good.

"What was he lecturing about?" Wedge asked.

"History or some shit. I didn't listen too hard. You can have Highwind ask him." Cid looked up, and Biggs grinned. "He's got dinner duty tonight."

Cid glanced up at the schedule board and made a face at his name in the "Sol. Dinner" column. "Dammit."

"It's not _that_ bad," Wedge said, taking his own seat. "You walk in, shove a tray at him, wait fifteen minutes, walk back out, go back to surfing porn. No sweat."

Cid clamped down on his reaction, shrugged, and reached for the coffee pot. "He's just a creepy fucker."

\--------

In Cid's expert opinion, "creepy" did not even begin to do justice to Akabane fucking Kuroudo. It wasn't just that he'd been convicted of killing something like 300 people over a ten year period. It wasn't that he had some weirdo powers having to do with absorbing weapons into his blood that meant he got the no metal treatment and they had to make sure everything that went in on his food tray came back out, minus the food.

It was that he'd gotten convicted of so many murders because he'd admitted to them. It was that he hadn't gotten nailed for more because he eventually couldn't remember enough details to pin specific crimes on him. It was that he had walked into prison with a smile on his face, and it had stayed there for three years. It was that he was a fucking monster, and he was the nicest, most well-behaved prisoner that Cid had ever had the dubious pleasure of guarding.

_That_ was fucking creepy.

"Good evening, Mr. Highwind."

Most of the guards just ignored the Doc. Cid's mama had raised him better than that. "Doc. Chow time," he said, sliding the styrofoam tray and its one plastic spoon into the food slot.

"Thank you." Akabane waited until Cid moved away before standing to retrieve the tray and take it back to his desk. "How is the weather this evening?"

"Not bad. Was sunny most of the day." Cid suspected that Akabane didn't care as much about the weather as he did about making conversation (especially since Akabane got the newspaper every day and probably knew the weather before Cid did), but Cid always humored him. Why not, after all? "Kind of warm. Supposed to get cool tonight."

"Mmm, so the paper said. There is a hurricane making its way up the coast, I saw. I hope that it won't make too much trouble, especially after the flooding." It was part of much-repeated procedure that the Doc had to eat supervised, so Cid leaned back against the wall, completely unsurprised when the man even unfolded his paper napkin and put it in his lap before picking up his spoon. "I do hope your house wasn't in the flood zone?"

Cid shook his head. "Nah. Dry as a bone, if you don't count the leak in the damn roof."

Akabane glanced up. "Again? I thought that was the purpose behind the roofing project last summer...?"

Cid dearly wished for a cigarette. He wasn't sure if it was because of the spike in blood pressure about the fucking roofers or because the Doc actually REMEMBERED all this random shit that Cid rambled about. He was always careful never to give anything too specific away, because that was treading the line of becoming Too Involved With The Prisoners, but still...the man remembered more about Cid's home improvement and car projects than Cid often did himself. "It was SUPPOSED to be. Damn bastards did a crap job with the sealant. I should have trusted my instincts and done it my own damn self--"

Some ranting about the roofers and an inquiry into how Cid's latest junker was fixing up later, Cid took back the tray from the food slot, and Akabane returned to his cot, one leg crossed over the other, hands slung around his knee, expression as pleasant as always.

Cid was just turning away when Akabane asked, "You don't work tomorrow night, do you, Mr. Highwind?"

Cid stopped, turned back. "What?"

"I asked if you worked tomorrow evening." Akabane's smile didn't change, as if he was asking about the weather again, rather than something out of the ordinary and slightly suspicious.

"...Why?" Hell, maybe Akabane wanted something. It wasn't unheard of for a prisoner to ask guards for things from the outside, and even get them, if they had something to trade. Though Cid made it a policy not to do any inmates any favors. It was bad for morale. And some of the things the guards accepted in "trade" were pretty damned immoral. It was one of the reasons that Cid kept his distance from Biggs. Biggs was a nice enough guy...to the other guards. But any guy that traded cigarettes for blowjobs wasn't all that trustworthy, in Cid's opinion.

Akabane's smile widened, just a bit. "I was just wondering when I'd have the pleasure of your company again, that's all." Then, maybe sensing that Cid wasn't going to answer, he added, "Have a good evening, Mr. Highwind."

"...Right. ...'night, Doc." One last, hopefully quelling, look, and Cid left solitary. Something was off, but hell if he could figure it out.

In retrospect, Cid wished that he'd said something to the others. Not that it would have made much of a difference, really. After all, one relatively innocent question about whether Cid'd be on duty didn't suggest anything in particular. The other guards would have probably made jokes about how the psycho had a crush on him.

Still. For that bastard Biggs' sake, Cid wished he'd said something.

\--------

For the record, Cid was NOT scheduled to work Tuesday night and had traded Cloud for Wednesday. So when he got off his double shift at 6am on Tuesday, he was looking forward to sleeping most of Tuesday away and working on the '62 Chevy before going in for night shift on Thursday.

Instead, he pulled himself cursing out of the Chevy's guts at around midnight on Tuesday night, to hear Cloud's voice tell him that he needed to report in for emergency duty.

Biggs was dead. And Akabane Kuroudo had escaped.

Cid cursed again. Louder, and all the way in to the prison.

When he got there, he found the place in lockdown, the guards in a thinly disguised panic, and the warden all but frothing at the mouth. They had one dead guard and one missing inmate. Cid just kept his head down and joined in the room-to-room search. The warden insisted that none of the cameras on the outer doors or the fence had caught Akabane leaving, so he had to be still in the prison. Cid knew Doctor Jackal, though. He was fast as hell. Maybe faster than the eye of a video camera. And really...the man was _smart_. Granted he hadn't been out in the general prison population for years, but he'd probably seen enough to formulate an escape route, and Cid couldn't see him doing this _without_ a plan. That plus inhuman speed plus a crucial 10-15 minutes of leeway before Cloud found Biggs' body on the camera sweep and raised the alarm?

This was a man who hadn't gotten caught until he'd all but turned himself in. Cid would bet his ass that an outer door somewhere had opened and closed in that time. Someone moving in or moving out and not even noticing the breeze that went past them.

So he wasn't surprised in the least when their eight-hour room-to-room turned up three shivs, six stashes of drugs, and four separate types of contraband porn, but no ex-Transporter.

Akabane was not in the prison.

Before he left, Cid watched as the police searched Akabane's cell. The door was open, and there was a chalked body outline and a wide red stain just outside it. Cid's eyes lingered on it. He'd never really liked Biggs, but still. He wondered what the Doc had gotten his hands on to use as a weapon. Hell, he wouldn't have been surprised if Akabane had been able to kill him with his fucking _spoon_.

The police found jack in the cell. It was so clean it was almost sterile. Akabane had never accumulated much to begin with. There had been a steady stream of books and newspapers into cell 2S over the years, but Akabane had never kept any of them. The desk shelf was empty. The bed was neatly made. The only signs of habitation at all were the toothbrush and comb by the sink and Tuesday evening's newspaper folded neatly on the table.

When he left, Cid lit his first cigarette in two weeks and smoked it to the filter before he even got back to his car.

No one had asked, and he hadn't mentioned it, because what the fuck good would it do now. But he remembered the last conversation he'd had with Akabane.

_You don't work tomorrow night, do you, Mr. Highwind?_

Cid paused by his car, the old soldier in him noticing that there was a hell of a lot of places to hide in a parking lot, even though it was well on its way to a bright mid-morning.

Cid worked on a fixed schedule. If Akabane was as smart as Cid gave him credit for and had really been keeping track, then he would have known that. So why ask?

Cid crushed the butt under his heel and contemplated lighting another.

Easy. Cid had been working off-schedule. He'd taken Akabane dinner on a shift he didn't usually work. And Akabane had noticed. Had been concerned enough about it to try to find out whether Cid would continue to be off-schedule on Tuesday night. But Cid hadn't given him an answer.

Cid cursed and pulled out the other cigarette. The match was from a book so old that its ad for Rocket Town whiskey was almost worn clean off, but it struck just fine off Cid's thumbnail.

_So,_ Cid thought, blowing smoke up at the morning sun, _the million dollar question is: were you looking to avoid me being there when you escaped...or were you hoping that I would be, you creepy fucker? Were your plans flexible, or were you locked into that date for some reason? Trying to avoid killing me, or looking forward to it?_

Cid sincerely hoped that he never had a chance to find out. But the hair was standing up on the back of his neck, and that never meant anything good.

He scowled and checked his backseat before getting in the car. He was good at being paranoid, but that didn't mean he had to like it.

\--------

And nothing happened that day. Or the next. Or the next. Cid went back into work on Thursday, after most of the hell had settled down. As one of the last few people to see Akabane, he even had to give a statement to the police. He didn't tell them about Akabane's weird question. Again: what the hell good would it have done? And the warden was just itching for a scapegoat for the whole clusterfuck. He already had Biggs, but Biggs kind of had the built-in sympathy factor of being dead. A living scapegoat that could be called out, shamed, and very publically fired would have been even better, and like hell Cid was going to volunteer.

Cid started actually putting his carrying permit to use, but it was more to do something to make the hair on his neck lay down than because he thought it would actually come in useful. The way Cid looked at it, weird questions aside, Akabane was not likely to show up, and if he did, he wasn't likely to cut Cid's throat out of all the throats in the world, and if he _was_, there wasn't going to be a whole lot Cid could do about it but be ready to shoot him. So Cid didn't change his routine one damn bit. He went to work. He came home. He worked on the Chevy. He started fixing the fucking roof, one sunny morning. And day in, day out, there was still "dangerous serial killer still at large" on the news and a conspicuous absence in cell 2S.

It was almost enough to convince Cid that everything was fine. And yet, somehow, he wasn't as surprised as he could have been when Doctor Jackal showed up in his living room.

It was about a week and a half since Akabane's escape. Cid had come home after his usual night shift, looking forward to a shower, a beer, and the remains of last night's fried chicken in the fridge, in that order. He wandered out of the bathroom, nothing but a ratty towel around his hips, and stopped short at the sight of a black, wide-brimmed hat on his kitchen table.

A very LARGE hat. A very FAMILIAR large hat.

Cid stared at it for a long moment. His gun was in the living room, on the table by the door. Possibly of no use at all, depending on where his guest was right now. Cid sighed, went to the fridge, and got his damned beer. He had the feeling he was going to need it. He took a long swig. "Akabane?"

"In here, Mr. Highwind." Cool and polite, as always. And in the living room. Great.

"Do I need to worry about gettin' dead anytime soon?" he called out into the hall.

The response was almost immediate, obviously amused. "Not on my account. And I've taken the liberty of taking the bullets out of your gun, so neither of us will have to do anything we'd both regret."

"Smartass," Cid grumbled, then went to put on pants.

When he got back, Akabane was looking at the pictures on the wall by his desk, a dark shadow in the morning sun streaming in through the living room curtains. Black trenchcoat, arms clasped behind his back, looking completely unchanged by three years in prison, or the what...four?...years before that that stood between now and the LAST time Cid'd seen Akabane in his working clothes. Cid leaned an arm up on the doorway. "How the hell did you find a replacement for that hat in the past week?"

Akabane cocked his head at him, eyebrow raised. "It's mine." He sketched a gesture with his hands, to indicate the rest of his clothes, too.

Cid desperately wanted a cigarette. He rubbed his eyes. "You stopped..._in the middle of escaping a max security prison_...you stopped into Holding to get your personal effects."

Akabane smiled. "Of course. I really like that hat. It has sentimental value."

Cid rubbed a hand hard over his face, then back through his hair. He hadn't heard _that_ at work. Hell, maybe no one'd gone and checked Holding yet for Akabane's stuff. "You are one crazy bastard."

Akabane chuckled. "So you've always been so fond of telling me. The very first thing you said to me, even." He flicked his fingers at the picture he'd been looking at, one of the few that Cid had bothered both framing _and_ hanging up. Cid couldn't see it from here, wasn't sure he was ready to get any closer, but he knew what it was, could see in his mind Zack and Barrett's shit-eating grins, Vince's impassive stare, Shera's bright smile, and Akabane off to the side, enigmatic and smiling. A part of the team but not, the way he'd always been.

"Nah, I called you a crazy _motherfucking_ bastard, first thing." Which had been justified, Cid always thought, since Akabane had all but fucking _flown_ up into Cid's bird, leaping for the door with what appeared to be half of the insurgent camp after him and a feral grin on his face. Then Cid had been too busy cursing at the enemy taking potshots at them as they flew away to call Akabane much of anything.

"I stand corrected," Akabane said, turning to look at Cid for a long moment. Cid just looked back. Dressed like that, rather than in prison greys, Akabane wasn't the prisoner in 2S so much as he was the black ops agent that Cid had met all those years ago, in another lifetime.

When Akabane'd been brought in, Cid had thought about telling the prison administration that they'd worked together before. He wasn't likely to treat Akabane any different than any other prisoner, but he was sure that there was some kind of stupid rule somewhere that he was standing on. But the economy was shit, and they were starting to lay off guards, and Cid didn't really want to stick his head up as a problem of any sort. Akabane had blinked at him the first time he'd brought him dinner, but had seemed content to pretend they'd never met before. So Cid had kept his mouth shut and let the prisoner in 2S overlap the Akabane Kuroudo he and his team had flown around hell for nine months.

And now Akabane Kuroudo stood in front of him again. He brought back more memories than Cid wanted to deal with with only one beer in his bloodstream.

Cid figured there was no point beating around the bush. "So, what do you want, exactly? Or is this just a social call?"

As usual, Akabane wasn't put off. "Actually, it is. I wanted to say goodbye and to thank you."

Cid paused, beer bottle halfway to his mouth. "...thank me."

"Yes." Akabane cocked his head. "After all, you were one of the few people to make my stay pleasant, these past few years."

Cid had promised himself he wouldn't ask. Promised himself that he wasn't going to get anymore tangled up in Doctor Jackal than required to get the man out of his house and preferably out of his life. But he just couldn't help asking. "Why the hell were you even _there_? You all but fucking turned yourself in. You could have escaped being captured. Fuck, you proved that you could have escaped any damn time you wanted to. So why hang around in solitary?"

Akabane shrugged. "I wanted some time to think. Some peace and quiet."

"In fucking _prison_?"

Good Christ, there was the devil-may-care grin. "You have to admit that it was peaceful and quiet in solitary confinement. Do you mind if I sit?" Akabane gestured to the battered sofa.

Cid threw up the hand that didn't have the beer in it. "Sure, fuck, why not. Go ahead."

"Thank you." Akabane sat, legs crossed and fingers laced around one knee. "I wanted some time to think. A step back, if you will. I thought that you would understand that, being here as you are--" he met Cid's eyes "--working a thankless and boring job when you have other options."

Cid felt his hackles rising, even though it was the truth. He opened his mouth to yell, then shut it, upending the bottle and letting the rest of his beer slide down his throat instead. "Yeah, well. I don't like a lot of those options." He set the bottle down on the desk, moved to sit in his easy chair by the couch. Hell, why not? "Things changed after you moved on. We started getting more dangerous missions. Bloodier. Not just hit and run or escort runs for black ops like with you, but clean-ups. We lost Barrett and Zack...fuck, about six months after you left. Vince lost his fucking _arm_ a few months later. Then my tour was up and I." Cid stopped. He'd been a lot of things. Tired. Scared. Heartsore. Sick of killing people. Sick of watching people die. "I wanted out."

"An understandable decision," Akabane said, his tone actually sounding sincere.

Cid barked a laugh. "This from the guy who went on to be the bloodiest fucking Transporter in the world."

Akabane laughed softly. "Yes, well. Everyone has to have a hobby, Mr. Highwind. And I notice that you are still here having this conversation with me, regardless."

Suddenly, Cid wanted another beer. _And_ a cigarette. At the same time. "Yeah, well. I can't exactly throw any stones. We both killed people because someone paid us to. You just stuck with it longer than I did. Enjoyed it more." He looked over, but Akabane was still smiling, pointedly not correcting him. "So what are you going to do now that your vacation's over? Go back to killing people?"

Akabane took a deep considering breath. "I think that I'll go to Japan. I have several contacts there who will be, I think, unsurprised to see me."

"So that's a yes."

Akabane tilted his hands in a shrug. "Transporting goes on with or without me, Mr. Highwind. There will always be those wanting to move guarded goods, as there will always be those trying to steal them. And very few of the people I kill are good people."

Cid waved a dismissive hand. He didn't want to touch that one with a ten foot pole. Akabane had a way of making his crazy make sense, and it was fucking dangerous to listen to him when he got like that.

"You might want to keep it in mind, Mr. Highwind," Akabane said, standing and moving back into the hallway. "In case you get tired of your current employment."

Cid craned his head to look after him. "What?"

Akabane's voice floated back from the kitchen. "Good Transporters are hard to find, Mr. Highwind. Even rarer are Transporters who do the actual transporting." Akabane walked back into the doorway, settling his hat on his head. "I've only met...perhaps one...who could match your skill on land, and none in the air."

Cid blinked at him. "Have you listened to a damned word I've said?"

"Drivers and pilots are usually not required to engage in battle," Akabane said mildly. "That is what guards are for. Like me." He chuckled, probably at whatever look was on Cid's face, but didn't say he was kidding.

Cid snorted a laugh as he stood. "You're out of your fucking mind."

Akabane shrugged, still smiling. "Ah, well. A pity." He held out a hand, for all the world like an old friend that had just stopped by for a chat. "My thanks, again, Mr. Highwind. I imagine we won't see each other again." He smirked. "Unless you reconsider, that is."

"Don't hold your breath." Cid only hesitated a moment before taking the proffered hand. This was familiar, and it took a moment for Cid to realize why. The same handshake, the same goodbye all those years ago, before Akabane had left their squad and moved on to wherever operatives went when they were done killing insurgents.

For a long second, Cid could almost smell the exhaust and dust of the landing pad. Could almost feel the sweat running down his back from the mission, could almost hear Barrett and Zack tossing insults back and forth behind him.

Goddammit.

He let go, and Akabane stood looking down at him, his smile genuinely pleased, as far as Cid could tell. "I do wish we could have met again under more pleasant circumstances, Mr. Highwind."

Cid swallowed. "I'm kinda glad we didn't." _Because some days, I'd take you up on that offer. Because you look so goddamn SURE. Because you almost make sense. Because sometimes I WANT you to make sense. Because sometimes I WANT it to be that fucking easy._

Confusion clouded Akabane's smile for a moment, but then cleared, knowingly. Whether he actually got it or not didn't really matter, though. "Perhaps you're right." Akabane tipped his hat. "I wish you the best of luck, Mr. Highwind."

"Same to you, for everything but the killing people part."

Akabane laughed as he turned. "Fair enough."

Cid stood there and watched him walk down the hall. Stood there and listened as the back door closed, as footsteps rang hollow on the back porch, then crunched down into grass, then faded. Then he just stood there. For...he wasn't sure how long.

He walked over to the picture on the wall and pulled it down. He blew the light coat of dust off it, looking at it for the first time in a long time. Not at Barrett or Zack or Vince, but at himself. Nearly ten years younger, smart-ass grin on his face, cigarette clamped between his teeth, and the best helicopter he'd ever laid his hands on shining in the sun right behind him. And Akabane, standing to the side, smiling that smile that never quite reached his eyes.

Akabane, he realized, was the only one in the picture who hadn't changed. Still the same cold-blooded bastard he'd always been. Cid wasn't sure whether that was a good thing or not.

Exhaustion started to drag at Cid's eyes. He rubbed them, put the picture back on the wall, and walked over to the phone. He paused, then cursed and had to dig out his address book for the number. He punched it in, eyes closed as it rang. Belatedly, he realized that normal people were, maybe, busy at this time of day.

"Yes?"

"Vince," Cid said.

"...Cid?"

"Yeah."

Cid could hear the sounds of the shop dimly behind Vincent. Guys bantering, metal hitting concrete, someone getting a bit too trigger-happy with the air wrench. Vincent must have the door to the office open.

"...Cid? Are you all right?"

Cid took a deep breath. "Not really. Fuck, but I've got a story to tell you. But later." He sat down with his back to the wall, phone cradled against his shoulder. "Later. How've you been?"

Slowly, Cid coaxed more than five words out of Vincent. About the shop. About how business was going. About how Shera had come by the other day to complain that Cid hadn't been keeping in touch. About anything.

Cid just sat there, eyes closed, and listened.

~END


End file.
